Morgan: ‘Didn’t expect to be a Band-Aid’

After taking out some aggression the night before, Nyjer Morgan was ready by Friday afternoon to discuss his latest bit of brutal luck.

The Brewers placed Morgan on the disabled list on Friday with a fractured left middle finger, which he hurt bunting during the eighth inning of the team’s Thursday night loss in Atlanta. Morgan was only two days removed from a previous stint on the DL with a leg injury and was inconsolable. He had to apologize to the visiting clubhouse crew at Turner Field after kicking a hole through some drywall.

“I have to keep a positive attitude,” he said. “I have to root on the boys. This is still one of the best groups I’ve ever been with, and I enjoy competing with them every day. I didn’t expect to come here and be a Band-Aid.”

Morgan’s finger was fractured at the base of his fingertip and he wore a splint on Friday but will not need surgery like catcher Jonathan Lucroy did in Spring Training. The Brewers say he will miss 2-4 weeks, and Morgan, acquired by Milwaukee in a late-March trade with Washington, was aiming for the low end of that estimate.

“I just have to hang in there,” he said. “I don’t know, dude. I feel like I’ve been living right. It’s just adversity, you know? It was two little fluke plays.”

The first was April 13 in Pittsburgh, when Morgan suffered a deep right thigh bruise in a plate collision with Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit. He rehabbed at Triple-A Nashville and returned to the Brewers on Tuesday in Atlanta. Two nights later, he was hurt again on the bunt.

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